Mobile computing systems such as laptop computers, notebook computers, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and the like are becoming more and more popular. A critical aspect of such systems is that they typically run using battery power when they are not or cannot be connected to an AC power source. As a result, mobile computers typically provide power management capabilities in order to run as long as possible off of battery power.
Various components on computing systems consume power. For example, a video display (typically an LCD on mobile computing systems) and memory associated with video display consume power. The video display must be continually refreshed, typically by a graphics engine on a graphics controller. The display is refreshed pixel by pixel, with the graphics engine fetching the pixel data from memory. The act of fetching data consumes power on the graphics engine (or controller), the memory subsystem containing the pixel data, and the display device itself. Typically the amount of power consumed is related to the refresh rate and the amount of memory required to support the video display. This in turn is related to the screen resolution. For example, a higher screen resolution will require more memory, and consequently more memory access resulting in more power consumption with each refresh than a lower resolution setting. Thus while high resolution screens on today's mobile computing devices provide increased image quality, they also consume more power resulting in potentially short battery life.
In view of the above, there is a need in the art for the present invention.